Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
• MasterCard Inc. is mulling an application to become a licensed payment service provider in China, a massive payments market dominated by state-owned China UnionPay, according to Reuters.
• PayPal Holdings Inc.’s shares were trading at $37 in the early going Friday, down about 8% from Thursday’s close, after PayPal late on Thursday announced its second-quarter earnings, including a lower transaction take rate and profit margin, and an agreement with Visa Inc. that includes promotion of Visa cards and a new point-of-sale thrust for PayPal. Visa was trading at $79, virtually unchanged.
• Merchant processor BluePay will process rent payments in Canada as part of a property-management solution from Yardi.
• EMV chip card manufacturer CPI Card Group appointed Tom Knaus vice president and general manager of financial card operations. Most recently, Knaus served as president of CPS Cards Inc.
• Some 750 million smart phones with biometric authentication capability are in use today, or 30% of the global installed base, according to research from Acuity Market Intelligence. Biometrics will reach 100% of shipments by 2018 and of the installed base by 2020. By 2020, more than 800 million biometrically secured transactions will be performed annually on smart phones around the world, producing almost $7 billion in annual biometric authentication revenue, the research indicates.
• Payments by British consumers on smart phones jumped 54% last year, reaching $456 million, according to the British Bankers’ Association.
